In September, natural persons transferred $284.8 million to Kyrgyzstan. This is less than the previous month. Interestingly the decrease in receipts coincided with the decision of several Kyrgyz banks to suspend accepting remittances through the biggest banks in Russia.

Thus, if Kyrgyz citizens staying abroad transferred $293.8 million to the homeland in August, then in September - $284.8 million. In other words, almost $9 million less (-$8.98 million). The decrease is small, but the analysis of the last five years, including 2020, demonstrates that traditionally more money is transferred to Kyrgyzstan through money transfer systems in September than in August. The exception, if not taking 2024, was September 2022. Then remittances decreased by $4.33 million.

It is worth saying that the decline in remittances from Russia in September this year accounted for less than half (47.2%) of the total reduction. Thus, $271.3 million was sent from Russia to Kyrgyzstan in the first month of autumn, which is $4.24 million less than in August.

Recall that on 16 August, some large banks, including Mbank, reported about the suspension of money transfers to and from Russia. These restrictions affected transfers by phone number and through the bank's mobile application, as well as work with major Russian banks that have fallen under Western sanctions, such as Sberbank and TBank. At the same time, as the call to banks showed, it is still possible to receive money from Russia through most of them.

At the same time, the main reason for the reduced remittances to Kyrgyzstan is a decrease of $6.6 million in the amount transferred from non-CIS countries. This was mainly due to the almost twofold reduction of remittances from the USA (down to $2.5 million) and by 98.22% from South Korea (down to $100 thousand).

Along with the remittances decrease from the mentioned above countries, Kazakhstan and other CIS and non-CIS countries have increased remittances to Kyrgyzstan. Thus, our neighbours sent us $300 thousand more ($700 thousand in total), other CIS countries - by $1.6 million ($2.3 million in total) and other non-CIS countries - by $1.4 million ($6.1 million).

It should be noted that the outflow of individuals' money through rapid transfer systems from Kyrgyzstan also decreased. However, there is not such a noticeable reduction - only by $400 thousand to $35.6 million. The Kyrgyz sent less to Russia, by $1.34 million, $27.6 million, and did not send to Korea. But $200,000 more was sent to Turkey - $5.7 million.

In addition, from the beginning of the year to September, Kyrgyzstan received $2 billion 250.2 million through money transfer systems. This is $322.2 million more than in the analogous period of 2023 when $1 billion 928.01 million was transferred to the country. The main amount, $2 billion 99.3 million, is remittances to the country from Russia.